Press Release from The Lantern Group
Two additional Australian films have been selected for screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. This brings the total Australian selection to four films for the 2009 festival, the strongest Cannes slate since 2006.
The short documentary Cicada is screening in Directors’ Fortnight – a program organised by the French Directors’ Society, which highlights new talent and screens a selection of original world cinema.
Directed, produced and written by Amiel Courtin-Wilson, and also produced by Sally Hussey and written by Daniel P Jones, Cicada is a stylised monologue and re-telling of the first memory of Daniel P Jones who witnessed a murder at the age of five.
Cicada was commissioned as the opening night film of the 2008 Bayside Film Festival and has also screened at the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival. The Cannes screening will mark Cicada’s international premiere.
The restored 1971 Australian classic Wake in Fright will screen as part of Cannes Classics – the festival’s sidebar event that celebrates rediscovered gems. Directed by Canadian Ted Kotcheff, produced by George Willoughby and written by Evan Jones,
Wake in Fright first screened in Competition at Cannes in 1971 under the alternate international title Out Back.
A landmark film in the renaissance of Australian cinema in the 70s, Wake in Fright was lost for many years and has been recently restored by Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive. The film will be distributed via Madman Entertainment in June.
Cicada and Wake in Fright join the two other previously announced Australian films invited to screen at Cannes this year. Bright Star (w/d: Jane Campion, p: Jan Chapman, Caroline Hewitt) has been selected to screen in Competition, and Samson & Delilah (w/d: Warwick Thornton, p: Kath Shelper) will screen in Un Certain Regard.